Twenty-two year-old Kingo first emerged in January 2012 during the
Fall/Winter 2012/2013 European menswear season, walking as an exclusive for Calvin
Klein and Louis Vuitton.Born and raised in Copenhagen, Kingo’s mother is Danish and his father is
Australian and he has spent some time down under with his father and paternal grandmother,
who live in South Australia. Indeed, Chadwick reports that Kingo missed the most recent menswear season in January to
spend time with the Australian side of his family in outback SA. He recounts some of his recent outback adventures in his blog.In January, Kingo also blogged some honest confessions about his experience as an overweight teenager. In a New Year’s Resolutions post in which he expresses a hope to avoid binge-eating and enjoy a healthier attitude towards food in future, Kingo reports that he weighed 95
kilos at the age of 14, eventually whittling down to 90kilos at 19. After sending in some photos
to a Copenhagen model agency in 2011, however, he was instructed to lose an additional 13 kilos in six weeks.Notes Kingo on his blog:

“Now, I bloody love food. I
love cooking it, smelling it, looking at it, and most of all eating it. Because
of my childhood obesity my love of all things edible, and my industry, I have
a truly messed up relationship with food. I will go for periods of eating clean
and taking my job really seriously, and then just inexplicably plunge into
dietary suicide all of a sudden. This started happening once the novelty of being
a successful model faded, and this correlating with me not enjoying my job as
much and not getting as much work ‘cos of aforementioned binging (I put on, and
lose, weight super easily). Mind you, I love my job. Or rather: I love the
things it allows me to do and I certainly don’t mind attention. But other than
that I don’t have much interest in fashion and the childish bullshit you have
to put up with.

So this is numero uno on my list. I wouldn’t go
as far as calling it an eating disorder. That wouldn’t be fair to people with
bigger problems than mine in that area. But it is definitely something that
causes me a lot of mental distress and therefore I want to correct”.

Interestingly, while media attention is often focussed on the subject of skinny models during any fashion week, the 2013 edition of Australian Fashion Week will feature at least two models (who we are aware of) who struggled with childhood obesity. The other is new Auckland face Holly Rose Emery, who is repped in Sydney by Chic Management. Like Kingo, as we reported last August, Emery also weighed 95 kilos at the age of 14. After
losing 36 kilos over the following two year period by eating healthier food and getting more exercise, her school eventually enquired if she was suffering from an eating disorder - irking her family.“Nobody called me when Holly was obese”
her mother Leonie Emery told frockwriter.Chadwick’s other
new MBFWA faces this year will be: